The Scream

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  He held the end up. It looked chewed.

  “NO!!”

  He dropped the rope and started stripping off his gear. He held on to his AWOL bag, which was packed with extra medgear, and grabbed a flashlight from the new meat.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the captain asked.

  “I’m going down there.” He could scarcely believe he was saying that. He had claustrophobia, taphephobia, any and every kind of phobia that steered one clear of dark, confining spaces.

  But those terrors had seemingly evaporated in the heat and rage of the moment. More accurately, it had been displaced, shunted aside by something far more disturbing. Maybe it was guilt, or the fear of standing by and doing nothing. Maybe it was because of Duncan and everybody else who’d died before him. Maybe it was because he was sick of the endless bullshit, because he realized then that that’s what they counted on: that you’d just get so tired and numb and jaded and betrayed that absolutely none of it mattered anymore, no matter how pointless, no matter how vile or repulsive or insane.

  Maybe that was it. Not that it made the slightest bit of difference.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Captain Classified warned him.

  “Thanks for the advice,” Jake hissed.

  “I mean it. Don’t go down there.”

  “Go to hell.” Jake started to turn toward the hole.

  That mutilated left hand landed squarely on Jake’s chest, stopping him. Captain Classified smiled his humorless, sly grin. Then he dropped his hand. And he backed off.

  “You first,” he said.

  He couldn’t really see the walls. But he could feel them.

  Oh, yes.

  All around him in the damp, smothering blackness, in some places only an inch or two above his head. He could feel the hard-packed laterite clay pressing down; it stank of sweat and darkness and death. He reached forward blindly, dragging fresh rope behind him, feeling gingerly along the trail of intertwined det cord that led to Vasquez. The darkness swallowed the puny light from his flash as he crept closer. He could hear things scuttling all around him. He tried to say “Hang on, I’m coming,” but when he opened his mouth, no words would come.

  Only air. Hot. Stale. Rank.

  He sucked it back in, panting like a lungfish, breath raggedly amplified in the dark till it filled his head. His heart felt as if it would explode, his mind threatened to scream and scream and never stop. But he bit down and pressed on; crawling, probing for booby traps, yard by excruciating yard.

  Until he found the head of the wounded man.

  “It’s OK, buddy, I’m here,” he whispered, lightly braille-probing the extent of the injuries. He could clearly discern the ragged, bubbling wheeze of a sucking chest wound. Vasquez was hurt bad, and Jake could tell by the sound that he was in danger of drowning in his own blood.

  Jake holstered his weapon, ripped open a pressure bandage, and tried to position the flash so he could see just how bad it was. It was hard; the light threw shadows and distorted contours. He scanned the soaked, shredded cloth across Vasquez’s chest. It looked wrong somehow, a series of lacerated punctures that peppered his torso from clavicle to crotch, not like gunshot or shrapnel wounds at all. Strange.

  “We’re gonna get you outta here, man, just hang on . . .”

  He slipped the rope under and around Vasquez’s shoulders and clipped the halyard. Vasquez moaned weakly; Jake gave the rope two sharp tugs, signaling the team above to hoist their asses the hell out of there. The rope tightened, and they began inching slowly backward out of the hole.

  They hadn’t gotten more than a yard when Vasquez screamed. The rope kept pulling.

  And something started pulling back.

  Vasquez screamed again: a sound unholy in its intensity, all the worse for the piteous, hollow burbling that was all he could manage. There was a wet sliding sound, and the overpowering stench of suppurated flesh. Jake spun the flash around to face Vasquez and the tunnel depths . . .

  . . . and he saw the unwinding coil of small intestine, snicking out and out of the hole in Vasquez’s belly like a soft pink-veined rope, sliding out and away into the dark, dank depths of the tunnel. He felt Vasquez go tight in his hands, the howl of his voice a hysterical sucking wind that never seemed to run out of air. He pulled frantically, trying to get him out of there, gripped in an insane tug-of-war with some unseen force, as the coil fed endlessly on and Vasquez shrieked and reached up and grabbed on to him with surprising force, and the pink, wet rope kept on pulling, running out of the smaller and starting with the larger, with its attendant flop and rip and tear; Vasquez shrieked and Jacob joined him, because now he wouldn’t let go and his grip dug into Jake with unbelievable desperation, and Jake felt the both of them being pulled now back into the black, stinking depths, and he suddenly wanted more than anything to just get away, get this guy off, get him OFF!

  He jerked free of his grasp, felt Vasquez go sucking back into the tunnel, felt the rope spinning back. At the last minute he grabbed hold of it and braced himself against the wall of the tunnel . . .

  . . . and the rope spun through his grip, friction-burning raw the skin of his palm as it went taut, then tight, tighter still until it whined from the tension like a guitar string tuned too high. Jake screamed, a high, keening “NOOOOOOOO” . . .

  . . . and the rope snapped, and the too-sudden release sent him plummeting backward, through the buckling tunnel wall behind him.

  And he fell, screaming.

  And he fell . . .

  * * *

  NINETEEN

  She began with his toes and the soles of his feet; with tongue and finger, she stroked and probed them. Sweet. So sweet. Nerve endings in glee. He could feel them leap as she ministered to them.

  He was stripped and strewn across the length of the bed. She was nakedly coiled at its foot, with his. Every taut-fleshed inch of her shimmered in the dim light of the monitors. He wanted to reach out and touch her.

  He couldn’t.

  Because Tara was thorough in every respect, from her mouth’s technique to the electrodes on his skull to the knotted silk that bound and spread-eagled his extremities. The only limb not tied down was his cock, which lay hard and long and flat across his belly. There was little chance of its untying him. It twitched helplessly.

  He twitched helplessly.

  Twice in two months, Pete had been bound up and wired for response. He was beginning to wonder if this was a trend. He could almost see the cover on next month’s issue of Penthouse: “Those Power Hungry Techno-Sluts of Rock ’n Roll.”

  Featuring a picture of Tara.

  And Jesse . . .

  “No, no,” he muttered, pulling his attention back to his feet. What was happening there was too good to despoil with guilt. It was over with Jesse. It was best that they move on. It was best . . .

  Oh, Jesus. Bottom line. It was the best toe-sucking he had ever received; and that, more than anything, decided him. There wasn’t a nerve in his body that didn’t culminate there, at the base of his physical being. Every kiss and caress made him aware of his heart, his lungs, his nipples, the short hairs surrounding them. Every flick of tongue ached languidly in every fluid speck of marrow in his bones.

  And it was magnificent. Oh, yes, it was. He could barely lift his head, what with the drugs and the bondage and all; but the glimpses he caught were enough.

  Almost too much.

  And then her mouth and hands began to track their way up his legs, with her own body dragging luxuriously behind. He could feel perfect breasts glide along his inner thighs as her lips reached and suckled on his slender pelvic bones, the flesh surrounding them, could feel her maddeningly steering clear of his focused desire.

  Please stop, he moaned internally. Please stay. But she could not hear him, and she did not obey. When her tongue burrowed into his navel, his desire disregarded its previous demand. Her breasts pressed together, enfolding and kneading him like unbaked Italian bread. His spine co
ursed with neon light.

  “Let me know,” she whispered, “when you’re ready.”

  “Right now,” he answered, voice husky and harsh as her own.

  She pulled up and away from him then; and for the first time since she’d secured him in place, he met her darkly blazing gaze.

  “Then you won’t mind waiting for me to catch up.” Then she smiled, and he marveled at how brightly her teeth gleamed: bright as the monitors that graphed his brain waves and illuminated the back of the tour bus. Almost too bright, in fact—as if they were a light source of their own.

  Pete felt an angel-hair tickle of dread stroke his soul. It wasn’t the first time that had happened tonight. From the moment he’d walked into Tara’s private tour bus/playground, there had been glimmers of something amiss.

  Like, for starters, her black lace, four-poster canopy bed. It was beautiful, yes, but only in a perversely antivirginal way. High kink indeed, with a very dark slant. And God only knew what weirdness lurked behind those reams of dangling curtain. The Phantom, perhaps. Dr. Caligari.

  And then there was the twelve-foot mirror: adjacent to the monitors, overlooking the bed. Though she swore otherwise, it was hard to believe that it wasn’t a two-way, and that somebody wasn’t sitting there watching them now.

  This groundless paranoia was abetted somewhat by the electrodes she had taped to his skull. He’d laughed when she’d brought it up, asked if this wasn’t some sinister zombifying technique in disguise. Now he wasn’t quite so reassured by the fact that she’d smiled and said yes.

  And then, of course, there was the fact that she’d tied him down.

  “Why did I let you do this to me?” he asked out loud. A rhetorical question, with a lump in its throat. She answered anyway, still hovering above him, face swallowed in darkness.

  “Because you were chosen.”

  “Ah, right.” He chuckled softly. “I thought that free will was just an illusion.”

  “And you were right.” She placed her hands, very softly, on his chest. “Like a heart. It doesn’t beat on a whim. It beats because that is its reason for being.”

  He smiled. “And I was born to make love with you.”

  Her grinning teeth shone out of the darkness above.

  “Something like that.”

  Then she lowered herself upon him, straddling his belly, leaning into his ardent kiss.

  And in that moment, he could almost believe it was true.

  There would be no more talking now. He no longer thought in words. It was the shared vocabulary of passion and sensation that spoke through him now, spoke in goose bump braille and illiterate moan. His heart was pounding beneath her touch, and his tongue danced mute and madly with her own.

  And he ached, God he ached, at the root of his being, to be inside her.

  Inside her.

  Before it was too late . . .

  But then she rose again, sliding up instead of down him, and he was helpless to do anything but whatever she willed. That was the crazy thing about bondage games. Dominance. Submission. He had abandoned his power to act independently when he let her tie him down. He had abandoned himself to her and to his own desire. Now she could take anything she wanted from him.

  And he would gladly give her everything he had.

  “Your soul,” she whispered. Guttural. Animal.

  Then she took his temples gently but firmly in hand and lowered herself onto his face.

  His tongue came out to greet her, to taste her heady womanfolds. And her taste was succulent primal madness. Intoxicating. Overwhelming. He lapped at the nectar that was its form. She ground herself against him, arched and tensing.

  A massive tremor erupted in her belly; he sensed it seismographically. Can she really be coming that fast? he wondered, making a strategic drive for her clitoris. She wouldn’t allow it, only ground in deeper and let out a desperate moan.

  The tip of his tongue touched something hard.

  A question mark formed in the grooves of his brain. The word hymen appeared before it. It sent such a shock wave of doubt and confusion and sudden inexplicable resurgent dread through him that his tongue, for a moment, forgot to move.

  “Ah!” she cried, grinding harder, almost painfully. His eyes shot open, found themselves staring up at her perfect belly. Staring with suddenly perfect horror.

  Something was pulsating under her flesh.

  And it was moving lower.

  He tried to pull away then; of course it was impossible. For the first time he realized how strong her grip on his head was. No longer gentle, her hands held him in place.

  “AH!” she screamed, pushing down nearly hard enough to snap his jaw . . .

  . . . and then the secret membrane snapped within her, and the vileness began to gush down his open throat. He tried to scream. It was muffled and throttled. He felt his soul begin to lurch, tear free of its moorings with a sickening rending sound that meshed perfectly with the blinding searing horror of his final moments, the vomitcumshitslime abomination that sluiced in and infested his skull.

  Then Tara screamed, letting go entirely, and his soul went out shrieking to nestle like an egg in her poisoned womb.

  As she buried her thumbs in his eyes.

  And the Passage began.

  * * *

  * * *

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5

  JFK STADIUM

  10:00 A.M.

  The bone-white Cadillac found its own personal space on the far horizon of the JFK parking lot. An hour and a half before showtime, and the place was already all but jammed to capacity.

  The top of the Caddy was down, of course and thank God; when they were in motion, Kyle barely smelled his passengers at all. But the motion was over, and the morning air already held ninety swollen degrees of humid heat.

  “Alright,” he said, careful not to breathe through his nose. “Here’s your tickets, boys and girls. Have a nice fucking time. And remember: be fruitful.

  “And multiply.”

  10:17 A.M.

  Outside the little groundskeeper shack that sat on the south side of the mountain—roughly halfway between the house and the lodge—there sat an enormous white satellite dish. It squatted on its cinder block base, blunt snoot pointing skyward through a niche in the trees, looking altogether imposing enough as to suggest some nefarious Stavro-Blofeldian missile base, replete with underground armies and a fake volcano opening at the top of the mountain.

  Cody Adams liked to entertain the notion, even though he knew darned well that (a) the mountain was not hollow, and (b) the antenna sent its signal to the tier upon tier of audio/video gear that packed the interior of the shed. On one monitor, James Bond—not Roger whatsisname, but Sean Connery, the real Bond—was busy fly-walking his suction-cupped way across the set of You Only Live Twice. Cody chuckled and took another hit off his first joint of the day, pleased that the film was appearing on Showtime. His mind was elsewhere, even while his fingers were busy.

  But then, that was Cody. He was a drifter and a dreamer; always had been, probably always would. That was just line by him; to Cody, what other people invariably mistook for a lack of ambition was merely a radically different set of priorities. Cody Adams had been, at various times in his thirty-nine years, a carpenter, technician, electrician, pro surfer, truck driver, acid head, cemetery groundskeeper, pizza chef, warehouse worker, and war protester. He had left each in its turn, not because he couldn’t handle the task, but rather because he had gotten out of it exactly what he required to continue on.

  It was a trait that drove his parents crazy, right up to the day they died. Cody suspected that to the end they held out that their fair-haired eldest would any minute wise up and pack off to medical school—or more likely Tuscon Community College—get a job in something boring and stable, find a nice girl, and settle down to spawn. It never happened. But they never got over hoping.

  Even his baby sister, Rachel, who was always the responsible one, seemed honor-bound to continue the tr
adition as best she could. She settled for talking Jake into offering him a job as caretaker/babysitter/bodyguard. Cody didn’t mind. He liked it here on the mountain. It was peaceful here.

  Sort of.

  He ran one big-knuckled, tanned hand through his wheat-colored shock of hair, brushing it out of his face. He had the look of the perennial beach bum: lean, muscular build that showed very little of its nearly four decades wear and tear, strong, nimble fingers, a craggy, open face that usually sported a three-week growth of sandy beard, ice-blue eyes, and a hairline that receded so gracefully as to be a blessing. He and Rachel hailed from opposite ends of the parental gene pool in just about everything, from looks to temperament to political orientation.

  But there were some things they held in common. A deep, abiding love: for each other, for Mother Nature, for good ol’ rock ’n’ roll.

  And for magic on the big screen.

  Which was exactly why Cody was putting the finishing touches on his pièce de résistance. It was one thing to stay up all night rigging twenty VCRs to tape the entire twelve-hour run of Rock Aid on as many networks, another to edit them into a cohesive whole after the fact. But this . . .

  This was gonna be something special.

  Baby Sis had judged that a sweltering concert was no place for a nine-month-old and had reluctantly stayed home. Ted and Chris had cycled down on Ted’s new scoot. Baby Sis had resigned herself to watching it all on the tube and had invited up a few girlfriends to do it with her.

  Cody twisted the last hex nut on the last coaxial cable into place and squeezed around the clutter to seat himself on his throne: a pneumatic swivel chair in front of a battered Apple computer, a budget video mixer, and his little switcher box. Baby Sis was bummed.

  Not for long.

  With this setup he could simultaneously record uninterrupted and play mix-n-match on the homefront with any of the one hundred and seventy-eight channels that the dish pulled in. A video camera on a tripod was aimed squarely at the chair: Cody turned around, focused the camera, stuck a joint between his lips, and grinned into Monitor One.